Well, obviously if your hearing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know, if you’re 105 years old or whatever, and/or your system is not (rpt not) revealing enough and/or has at least one or two errors in it and/or you don’t follow proper protocol for cable evaluation, such as using fully broken in cables, the chances are excellent you won’t hear much, if anything. If in fact any cable evaluation was actually performed which it probably wasn’t. Same as it always was, a lot of who shot John. |
Actually there are many things in Science that are not (rpt not) subject to revision. The absolute constant of the speed of light in a vacuum, the mass of an electron, all elements have exactly the same composition everywhere in the universe, the universe is expanding forever, the physical characteristics of a black hole have been known with absolute certainty since the 1960s, the hypotenuse of a right triangle given the other two sides is never in doubt, the equivalence of energy and mass (E= Mc2), all electromagnetic waves are comprised of photons, and all manufactured wire is directional.
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"[Nature] ... never says "Yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will someday experience its "No"—most theories, soon after conception."
Albert Einstein
>>>>As fate would have it in this hobby when a test proves negative it actually doesn’t mean “No.” It means “Maybe” because maybe the test was flawed and we’ll have to have someone else take a crack at it. And if the results are positive it probably means YES to the theory, though prudence dictates we get some more postive results on board for good measure. Any test is only one data point. Apologies to Albert.
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@willemj - with an attitude like that you will never advance in this hobby. Remember the Little Engine that Could? I think I can, I think I can, I think I can! 🚂 Toot, toot!
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Hey, ain’t nothin’ wrong with being obsessed with good sound. Let’s take a hypothetical case, shall we? OK, now I’m not expecting anyone to believe there can be 100% improvement to sound quality with only one tweak. Even though I personally have experienced that one more than one occasion. But to avoided putting anyone off too much or possibly causing a brain aneurysm in any die hard Skeptics let’s take it a little slower. Suppose you have five tweaks and your system is not all messed up and can actually hear the effects of all five tweaks. For the purposes of argument let’s say the five tweaks are 2 Blue Fuses, the new Graphene Contact Enhancer (applied to only interconnects and the Blue Fuses), a Green Pen for coloring the outer edge of CDs and finally, a spring based isolation system for speakers. OK, that’s five.
Then as each tweak is applied, we ascribe a percentage improvement to each tweak. So for each Blue Fuse let’s say, for the purpose of argument that there is a 15% SQ improvement. Not too high, not too low, right? That’s 30% for both fuses together. Next up, the graphene contact enhancer applied to the Blue Fuses and interconnects only. That should be another 30% SQ improvement at least, you know, being a little conservative. That’s a total of 60%.
Next up, the Green Pen. Now normally I’d estimate the Green Pen about 5-10% SQ improvement but since we’ve just improved the SQ by 60% th Green Pen should score higher, being more powerful now that you can hear the effect easier. So let’s say the Green Pen improves SQ by 20%, fair enough? Now we’re up to a total of 80% since we first started.
Isolating the speakers should produce even greater results since the speaker vibration will not be allowed to migrate to the electonics. So isolating the speakers, especially after we’ve used four tweaks already, should score, what, 30%?
Thus, with five tweaks, conservatively speaking, we’ve managed to improve the sound quality 110%. Pretty good for an afternoon’s work, eh?
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We often see this sort of thing, you know, people who are over educated in certain areas but who can’t see the forest for the trees. Since I actually didn’t read any of Mr. Self’s Cable screed what exactly was his reason for saying cables aren’t directional? Or was it some sort of gut feeling?
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@willemj Exactly! That’s why it’s an Appeal to Authority. Anybody can round up some expert somewhere who will support your position, no matter what your position happens to be. See, you guys learn something everyday. Even what’s his name knows what an Appeal to Authority is, which frankly is kind of shocking. 😛 Maybe you can find an Einstein quote. It nice that you admire or worship those who agree with you. 🙄
Definition of an Expert. Someone who use to be a drip under pressure. |
willemj, why are you arguing against your own star witness? You quoted him as stating cables are directional. Did you misquote him or are you just confused? 😳
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I’m always in awe of anyone who knows the limits of my perception. Gosh, does that Mr. Self dude have like, ESP or something? I’m guessing a little but here but Mr. Self isn’t on board the Tweak Train, is he? 🚂 Toot, toot!
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drjsmd
Cables do matter but they are also the biggest scam in high end audio. I am supposed to believe that it requires $3000 to produce a 1m interconnect with no moving parts? Maybe there are rare materials that require such a cost but there is scant science to back up the exaggerated claims of both the makers of such cables and the rather absurd claims that buyers report hearing.I do love reading the flowery reviews as they are extremely entertaining.
>>>>It would probably be helpful to your argument to post some of the alleged scant science and exaggerated claims of manufacturers and customers with some sort of evidence. Something. Otherwise you really don’t have a leg to stand on. By the way, my advice to you is don’t read any reviews of the $24,000 interconnects as you might risk a brain aneurysm. 🧠
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bdp24
I haven’t read through this thread, so forgive me if someone has already mentioned that Galen Gareis of Belden Cable has been writing some articles for Copper, PS Audio’s free online magazine. I’m finding them well worth the time it’s taking me to read them.
>>>>See my comments on the Cable Snake Oil Antidote thread.
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So sayeth the man who never says anything unless it’s some stalking behavior thing.
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Oh, I get. So now I’m the one who’s supposed to do it. 🙄
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I anxiously await your results. I had no idea you were so handy. Now we’re getting somewhere!
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dave_b
(I agree that) most cables are of a similar design and can be had fairly inexpensively.
That’s a patently false statement. There are solid core cables, there are stranded core cable. There are cables that have hollow conductors. There are cables with multiple solid core conductors. There are cables with air dielectric, cables with Teflon dielectric, cables with polypropylene dielectric. There are cables as thin as a human hair. There are 10 ga cables. There are silver cables, copper cables, liquid cables, carbon cables, graphene cables, cryod cables. There are cables that use single crystal copper. There are cables that use ultra pure copper. There are cables that use some gold mixed in with the silver. There are shielded and unshielded cables. There are cables that are controlled for directionality and cables that aren’t. Some cables have carbon fiber sleeves.
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Sounds real scientific. 😛 |
dynaquest4
Thanks, Geoff. Being you I knew you would be the first to chime in.
Hey, no problem. Thank you for the usual tasty nothingburgers. 🍔🍔
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Just mention the T word and wait to see who shows up. It’s uncanny! 😛 It’s like they have ESP.
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willemj, that’s what we call Kangaroo Courts over here. Boing! Boing! Boing!
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Uh, neither one of your new “evidence” are court cases, either. More fake news. What’s next, natural food? 🍔 The Teleportation Tweak? UFOs? Ghosts? 👻
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Thanks for the information supporting my original contention that there was no court case. Besides, the whole thing was resolved in favor of the cable company. So willemj’s contention of a court case was a perfect example of fake news. Also known as a nothing burger. 🍔
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And to think the UK used to be such a bastion of high end audio. What a shame.
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Ah, it was not a court case. Just as I thought. It’s equivalent to Better Business Bureau going after contact enhancers or the Teleportation Tweak. Give me a break. |
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If I’m not mistaken there was no court case in the UK. That’s an old wives tale. It was something along the lines of some pseudo skeptic writing an embarrassing article in the local newspaper. If there had been a court trial everybody and his brother in UK would be taking all the audio companies to court. Hel-loo! Unemployment is up. Besides, how would they assemble a jury? Nobody can hear. 🤡
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I’m enjoying a system has virtually no cables or power cords, not so much for the cost issue but the distortion and noise issue. Once you eliminate all the power cords, interconnects, speaker cables and fuses you realize how much distortion and noise all those things bring to the table. Of course, the cost savings of such a set-up is not something to be taken lightly. 😛
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I just sprung for an Audioquest Carbon HDMI Cable that was 5 times more than the almost new LG Blu Ray player I also picked up this week. Was that wrong? 😳 |
Twelve pages?! How about 40 years?
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Of course, the difference is you can have mathematical proof and you can prove physical theories. But you cannot have religious proof.
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Ya gotta love it when someone actually thinks taters is a real person. You can’t make this stuff up folks. Enjoy it while you can. |
The Amazing Randi offered Michael Fremer $1 Million dollars if he could tell the difference between $20,000 high end cables and Monster Cable. The negotiations bogged down when The Amazing Randi and his team of intrepid pseudo skeptics became a little suspicious that maybe Mr. Fremer might actually be able to hear the difference, even with all the ridiculous stipulations of the Randi Controlled Blind Test.
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mechans
Because sometimes it makes the music sound better. It's really not complicated. Not always BTW, sometimes.
shazam! |
🐑
gdhal
@geoffkait
You’re late. Remember to put what’s in thy back pocket where thy keyboard is. Trouble is of course, if thy back pocket consists of proceeds from a business that deals in voodoo, thy back pocket is liable to be empty. Would you consider that wise?
If thy eye offend thee pluck it out. 👀
A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from voodoo to the average Joe. - old audiophile axiom
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OK, boys and girls, what time is it? It’s time for a little, What the heck is happening to science these days? Taken from Zen and the Art of Debunkery. Enjoy. Italics provided by your humble scribe.
Seeing with humility, curiosity and fresh eyes was once the main point of science. But today it is often a different story. As the scientific enterprise has been bent toward exploitation, institutionalization, hyperspecialization and new orthodoxy, it has increasingly preoccupied itself with disconnected facts in a psychological, social and ecological vacuum. So disconnected has official science become from the greater scheme of things, that it tends to deny or disregard entire domains of reality and to satisfy itself with reducing all of life and consciousness to a dead physics.
As the millennium turns, science seems in many ways to be treading the weary path of the religions it presumed to replace. Where free, dispassionate inquiry once reigned, emotions now run high in the defense of a fundamentalized "scientific truth." As anomalies mount up beneath a sea of denial, defenders of the Faith and the Kingdom cling with increasing self-righteousness to the hull of a sinking paradigm. Faced with provocative evidence of things undreamt of in their philosophy, many otherwise mature scientists revert to a kind of skeptical infantilism characterized by blind faith in the absoluteness of the familiar. Small wonder, then, that so many promising fields of inquiry remain shrouded in superstition, ignorance, denial, disinformation, taboo . . . and debunkery.
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Oh, brother, another pithy remark. Dude, time to hang up your spurs. 🤠
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Anyone who thinks they do is not playing with a full deck, IMH (fairly informed) O.
That’s the same tired argument pseudo skeptics have been usIng for decades. It pretty much means you’ve run out of ammo.
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Someone needs to use the Yellow Pages to find his local consumer protection agency representative. I’m sure he’ll help you mount a nice big lawsuit against all these scam artists. Bad scam artist! Bad! Let us know how that works out. Also, try getting a hold of NASA to see if they have time to do some testing for you. Report back your results.
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“Because their "feeling" morphs into a non demonstrable "belief.”
Actually it’s quite the opposite. As fate would have it gdhal has sort of become the poster boy for the Backfire Effect. What is the Backfire Effect, you ask? The Backfire Effect is the phenomenon that occurs in a heated debate when a person refuses to listen to ANY argument but instead clings more strongly to his beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence. In fact he won’t even wait for the blind test he so vehemently supports, the test that will prove him right, because obviously he’s already made his mind up. Is that rational? Is that some kind of new scientific method? The demands for proof are only an indication he won’t listen to any evidence, as if evidence is meaningless. Give me a break! It’s right out of 12 Angry Men, when Juror 3 exclaims, “But you can’t PROVE it!” The last holdout. 😡 It’s a conspiracy, gdhal. 🤡
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Idle comment: taters wins again! 😬
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I don’t allow photos. Long story. If someone says that’s him it’s probably not. A lot of people say I look like a cross between Brian Ferry and Horst Buchholtz.
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That’s so deep. We should call you the Kosmetic Kid.
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It’s not too late. Look out below!
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Something is wrong with dave_b. We don’t know what it is. But we suspect ye olde peaches and hamburgers syndrome.
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Dave, stop projecting. I know you are but what am I? 🤪
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A rich man has about as much chance of entering audio Nirvana as a donkey has of passing through the eye of a needle.
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I think that’s called penny wise and pound foolish. 🤗 |
The used high end cable market is pretty stable, so if used cables don’t work out for any reason you should have no trouble recovering your money. If you pay full price for the latest and greatest, however, it’s kind if like buying a new car. It depreciates as soon as it leaves the dealer parking lot. Besides when you buy used the cables are already broken in. 😃 it’s kind of the same philosophy that has shut down many mom and pop high end stores, such as $30,000 amps. In bad economic times like these the savvy audiophile buys used. It’s not rocket science. 🚀 |
costco_emoji, so you built a cheap amp in your mom’s basement. Who cares?
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Gosh, dynaquest4, did you think of that all by yourself? Good...for...you... You’re...ve-ry...in-de-pend-ent. |
Lighten up, Costco. It’s only a hobby. 😬 |
